The Pirate Bay, unexpectedly, spoke out Wednesday afternoon against the Anonymous attacks on its behalf. "We'd like to be clear about our view on this: We do NOT encourage these actions," the Pirate Bay's administrators wrote on its Facebook page. "We believe in the open and free internets, where anyone can express their views. Even if we strongly disagree with them and even if they hate us. So don't fight them using their ugly methods. DDOS and blocks are both forms of censorship."

Since the order to block the Pirate Bay was announced, the site has been organizing a campaign of proxy servers it called "The Hydra Bay," linking on its home page to instructions of how to create a proxy for the site that circumvents the British carriers' block.

The Pirate Bay's advice to Anonymous suggested they join that proxy effort or try something else more proactive, like supporting the artists who now advertise with the Pirate Bay under its "Promo Bay" project. "If you want to help; start a tracker, arrange a manifestation, join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of bittorrent, set up a proxy, write your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol, print some pro piracy posters and decorate your town with, support our promo bay artists or just be a nice person and give your mom a call to tell her you love her."

One sub-group of Anonymous known as the People's Liberation Front also attacked the branch of Anonymous attacking British ISPs, writing on that "We strongly condemn the attack on Virgin and UK ISPs as it violates the 2nd principle of Anonymous to NEVER attack infrastructure."

A Twitter feed called Anonymous UK, which has been touting the attacks against Virgin and others, responded "Anonymous... Principles? What?"

"Virgin Media aren't ideal targets, I agree," the same feed wrote earlier in the day. "But I'm not the leader of Anonymous. Cry more."

The Pirate Bay's stance against Anonymous contrasts with that of WikiLeaks early last year, when Anonymous launched a series of website takedowns against Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Amazon and others for their payment embargo against WikiLeaks and other actions in opposition to the secret-spilling group. "We neither condemn nor applaud these attacks,” spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson wrote at the time. “We believe they are a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets."